


the very simplest of touches

by OldSportSquared



Category: Original Work
Genre: Dubiously SciFi, M/M, Prison, Science Fiction, Touch-Starved, Touch-Starved - Finding Excuses for Brief/Apparently-Casual Touches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:34:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26367259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldSportSquared/pseuds/OldSportSquared
Summary: Agon has gone four hundred and fourteen days without touch. He can do it again.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character, Prisoner/Fellow Prisoner
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21
Collections: We die afen and afen





	the very simplest of touches

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notthedevil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notthedevil/gifts).



The second fucking worst thing about this cell is that it's not measurable. Agon's a dab hand at all kinds of ways to tell how much time has passed in prison, how many days have gone by, but one of the best ways he's ever found to keep all the numbers straight in your head is old school pacing. 

Like the last cell, that had been a good cell, an old fashioned cell, the sort of place where they made it easy for you to keep your sanity. Twelve paces to the end of the room, five across, and a metallic end door so shiny that on the twelfth pace, with his face pressed right up against it, he'd been able to make out the silver blurred dark of his hair and squashed pale outline of his face, as though he'd been reflected in some immense spoon. Agon wasn't mad enough to think that his own face was company, and there was no point in pretending it was, but it hadn't stopped him sitting there rather than on the one regulation chair they'd given him, back against his own reflection, door warm enough to convince him that there was someone else in the room. It’s the sort of weakness he doesn’t often allow himself.

This cell on the other hand, after an estimated four hundred and fourteen days of more (or less) solitary confinement in varied locations, this one is unmeasurable. It’s not the first time he’s been confined to one of the spherical prisons, that gelled when you pushed against the sides and then sometimes slowly, reluctantly moved with the force of a prisoner throwing the full force of their body against the walls, but it’s the first time it’s simply puffed out in front of his footsteps and never, ever the same amount before it snaps back into place. In his sleep it expands and contracts so nothing is certain.

That was only the second worst thing though. The first worst thing which also tied for the first best thing, was the man sitting cross legged on the bunk opposite him. So innocuous looking, boring even, the sort of man you’d stroll past everyday and twice on Sundays if you were out in a street. That was something his grandmother used to say, even though she’d emigrated from Earth, two generations back and there was no such thing as a sun-day on the rain drenched world that was, she insisted, as she poured water out of her soggy boots, _still_ better than the husk of Earth.

That can’t stop Agon’s greedy glances, even though the embarrassment of his need to keep looking back, to drink in the sight of the first human face he’s seen in four hundred days fills him with shame. It doesn’t matter what shade of brown the man’s hair is, or the greyness of his eyes against his tanned skin. None of that matters, just the fact that he isn’t wearing a mask. Fuck, he’s not wearing gloves either, not even socks.

If Agon had ever had faith in a higher power it had departed a long time since, but he risks a glance up at the liquid-looking ceiling, like he expects some great tender eye to look back at him. He’s fairly sure the only thing up there though is another iteration of a security system so advanced that he’s willing to bet the AI knows exactly what it means when he slowly and deliberately spits on the floor, without the need to pass that on to its betters. 

Mayren - or at least that was the name he’d given, when he’d squeezed in through the temporary gap in the wall fourteen days ago, the one that Agon had attempted to rip back open behind him, tearing his nails against the irresistible force of the closure, doesn’t look particularly disgusted. Of course he wouldn’t be. If he’s for real, he’s done a lot worse than that in his time. If he isn’t, then he’ll have been briefed not to antagonize Agon.

From pure habit, Agon looks at Mayren’s hands again, they’re folded in the crooks of his knees now, curled up, fingers tucked in. Once a long time ago, he’d have known for sure what that meant. There’d been people once, so many of them that he’d grown bored of looking at them, elected for screens, pads, flicks instead. It’d been part of his job to know what they were thinking, to read their bodies and their faces. Objectively, he still knows the signs. Mayren’s relaxed, unthreatened, everything about his body screams peaceful. Agon wants to shake him until his teeth rattle.

In fact more than that, he wants to throw him against the wall, and let the backs of his fingers press into the flesh of Mayren’s neck, wants to curl their hands together until he can feel Mayren’s calloused fingertips against his own, the strength of them, the warmth of them. Would settle for less, would settle for the press of Mayren’s knee against his, or the human touch of brushing an eyelash from Mayren’s face. 

Four hundred and fourteen days, and it’s the last fourteen that are driving him mad.

It was pretty obvious, at least it seemed so to Agon, that the chances were exponentially high that Mayren’s presence was absolutely nothing to do with some sort of alien overcrowding, and everything to do with finding another way to break Agon. Sitting with his back to his warm reflection had been a fool’s idea clearly, tipped them off that he was getting desperate enough to maybe break, maybe spill, if he could just be given enough incentive. 

Torture didn’t work, the protocols in Agon’s head were too good, so hardwired into his actual brain that any attempt of forcible extraction would simply release him from this entire nightmare. They’d tried everything else in the handbook, the one that Agon had all but swallowed during his training, everything they knew, that the aliens knew about humans. How to extract pain, how to bring about pleasure. How to pick them up, turn them upside down and shake everything they knew out of their heads.

At least it changes nothing. He just has to continue not to break, not even now that, finally, the aliens have turned to something harder to resist. And regardless of which scenario is true, Agon will treat Mayren the same, gut him politely with words until all the info he can get falls out, and just keep not touching him.

The first time isn’t an accident. Agon tells himself that it is, but despite repetition and despite the fact that he’s been trained to be an exceedingly good, indeed a universe-class liar, he’s never been able to fool himself. There’s a measure of pitiful truth in the fact that he hadn’t intended it at first, when he’d volunteered to show Mayren the slightly different physical exercises he’d found were best for the lighter than normal Earth-G in the cell. If he were a spy, after all, best not to seem too apparent of it. And well, the cell was small. Small for one person, even smaller for two.

Agon fixes his eyes on the ground as he gets his own form perfect, before he glanced up at Mayren, barely a handswidth away, from the tight press of Avon's fingers into the too-yielding floor. Mayren has his head down, concentrating on the curve of his spine and the straightness of his arms. The urge is shameful and huge, so immediate in need that Agon can't resist, feels the first falter of will in so long. It's not him, he insists desperately to himself, not him who extends out his hand width, stretches his fingers until they touch, barely, the little finger of Mayren's left hand. 

It's the tiniest brush, Agon barely feels it, Mayren doesn't seem to notice it. It's not even close to enough. Like any addiction, the first hit is only the beginning. 

For months, for over a year, Agon has counted. Days, steps, meals, the number of hands that appropriately gloved and concealed had carried him away for just one last try at cracking the walnut of his mind. Now at the last, he's resorted to counting touches.

The way that Agon hands over the bowls that come in on the same tray, almost as though by magic, always when his back is turned so he can't see the door open, and endeavours in that moment to let their fingers touch, however hesitantly and briefly. When, by chance they pace at the same time in the room, and must make the same turn in the same narrow spot, and even though cloth the electric thrill of the touch is palpable, can warm him for a day, a day and a half. One time when Mayren gestures as he tells a story of a time pre these walls, and Agon contrives with barely a movement to move within his hand's path.

It consumes him. Agon counts them in his head, catalogues them, tells himself that this is just another metric of the ways in which he stays alive, but again, he's always been bad at lying to himself. New boundaries get set and knocked down each day, things like there must never be more than one moment where however accidentally skin touches skin - destroyed on the twenty sixth day they've been in the cell together, when he volunteered to help turn the beds with Mayren for the merest, barest change in their surrounding, and touched twice like that, as they regathered bedding, and straightened the bunks. There's a horrific fascination to it, to the knowledge that now the need has been acknowledged, that a genie has been taken out of the bottle that can't be put back in. 

It isn't satiated, this genie, by the touches. It's _placated_ , and even amidst the warmth of the human engagement, even amongst the insane joy of once again touching another human, of hearing their stories, of allowing them, however unwillingly, to come a little closer, Agon retains his fear. Only now it's changed. He still doesn't believe that he will break, but for the first time, he admits the possibility.

it's day fifty one, by his new system, the one that dates from Mayren's entrance, and he has, Agon believes with some skill, managed to under a pretext brush a hair from Mayren's face, when he finds himself pushed against the bunk by Mayren, face twisted and hurt. "Do you taunt me?" Mayren demands. "is this for your amusement? Touching me so, to see when I will break, when I will beg you for more? Spy or not, I had thought you had some honour, some understanding as a fellow human of what it's like in these cells."

The feel of Mayren's hands against his shoulders, the warmness of his breath on Agon's cheek, the no longer boring blaze of his eyes, the strength of the touch of him is too much. "Forgive me," Agon says, entirely sincerely, "and if this is the cruelest of tricks on your side, then still forgive me." With that, he kisses Mayren in such a way that it would require apology. Agon doesn't know what he expects - the way that Mayren opens his mouth and pushes his fingers against Agon's neck as though to touch more skin, winds them in his hair and holds him close, is not one of them, and heedless of AI, and the bit of his head that hysterically screams trap, Agon lets himself have this. Slides his fingers between Mayren's loose top and the smooth skin of his waist, registers for the first time, the way that Mayren moves into the touch, convulsively as though he can't help it - as if for the first time, he believes Agon means it.

If they take this away...well Agon has learnt to live without it before, he can do it again, and having it at all is precious. He extends a hand to the camera he knows is there, and gives it the finger.


End file.
